The DOL/Treasury hearings on lifetime income optiopns / retirement security that were held last fall produced a reasonably large amount of testimony and formal responses.

Much of this material comes from highly credible and objective sources.

A good example of this type of balanced commentary is the response from Mark Warshawsky who is the Director of Retirement Research at Towers Watson.

Four pages and worth the time.  The commentary can be viewed by clicking here.

Through the Senate Special Committee on Aging, U.S. lawmakers and regulators have been conducting hearings focused on retirement security issues.

The hearings are a follow-up to a recent request for comment on the same topic from the U.S. Labor and Treasury Departments.

A handfull of federal agencies have posted a request in the Federal Register. 

The agencies are requesting information and advice on the use of annuities and other lifetime income products in employer sponsored retirement plans such as 401ks.  Comments are due May 3.

The interest stems from the prevalence of defined contribution retirement plans such as 401ks and the fact that most participants in these retirement plans distribute their savings in the form of a lump sum rather than a stream of income.

Members of Congress and officials from the Departments of Treasury and Labor are working on options that would provide sources of guaranteed lifetime income to participants in 401k and other pension plans.

At a high level, it is clear that the Obama Administration wants to create structures and incentives for:

An "in-plan annuity" refers to an annuity option that exists within a 401k plan.

The notion of an annuity-based retirement income option within a 401k plan is a relatively new concept.

Advocates of in-plan annuities--which include key members of the Treasury Department and Congress--believe that partial annuitization is important for the retirement security of the millions of Americans whose access to stable sources of pension income is largely limited to Social Security.

The hedging programs used by insurance companies to support the guaranteed living benefit features in their variable annuity products have held-up well recently.

Milliman reports that insurance companies supported 94% of their guarantees for the six month period ending in March 2009.

The success of the hedging programs and the highly volatile capital market environment have encouraged many insurers to increase their hedging efforts.